THURSDAY AM BUZZ: Are letters to the editor down at your paper?

One of the topics in our industry is the decline of traditional letters to the editor.

I know at my newspaper in Carthage, Mo., in the late 1990s, we typically published one letter per day, and sometimes two or three in the weekend edition. We were fortunate to have 5-10 a week.

As I left my newspaper in Neosho, Mo., this spring, the number of letters declined to nearly one or two a week — if we were lucky.

And it wasn't as if we had a shortage of interesting news that was ripe for reader input, it was the fact that reader habits have changed in that span of 10-plus years.

Even the term "letters to the editor" screams 1950s not 2011.

During my onsite visits to newsrooms throughout ACM in the coming months, one of the main topics of discussion will be revamping the traditional Opinion or Viewpoint page to a more 2011-friendly format, and a big focus of that change is how a newspaper treats and plays "reader feedback."

I am urging our ACM newspapers to ditch what it calls "letters to the editor" for a more conversational approach. Maybe it's "Reader Voice," or "Your View" or "Reader Feedback."

And in today's world of social media, newspapers and websites need to urge reader feedback not only through story comments, but also through questions posed on a topic by the newspaper.

Example: A newspaper publishes a story on the city manager of its community who moved out of the city limits. While it is not a violation of city code, some citizens think it is not right for the person running the town to live outside its borders. This screams reader feedback. Pose a simple question on your website with the story and on your social media pages, "Do you think the city manager should be required to live in the city limits?" State that you will publish a handful of responses in the print edition on a specified date, and now you have a great interactive editorial page.

The Reader Feedback feature on your op-ed page can also be fun. It is graduation season, so maybe you pose the question, "What advice would you give the graduating class of 2011?" Again, state you will publish a handful of responses in the print edition, and now you have great reader input in both digital and print.

Start slow and be consistent with this feature. I recommended doing a question a week, and then as the feature grows and your staff and readers are more comfortable, move up to three questions per day or conduct a question when a big news story breaks and warrants one.

The topic of retooling our opinion pages will be one we will discuss further in detail in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks for reading.